How one atheist sees life

Why I Am An Atheist… part 42

What follows is a comment I just made in another of my blog posts to a believer in a creator god. I cannot for certain say that the commenter is deist or theist but I suspect them of being some hybrid of Christianity and agnostic-like deist. The questions they posed seemed to solidify in me a certain ‘load’ of thought. It fell from my fingers onto the keys like I was reading it from a book. It came out in a kind of creative writing kind of way in one burst of activity.

It seems to me to read sort of well, but I’d appreciate comments on content and style. Of course any kind of comment is welcome.

There is no evidence for the existence of a creator and every reason to think it a made up story. See, this Jesus thing, it’s not the first time that story has been told by men and there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus as a man… none. I am an atheist because I see all the similar stories that came before Jesus and we all think those were just stories and myth. I’m not fooled, this one is too.

There are millions of as yet unfalsifiable ideas as to how the universe came to be. I did not say any of them are true, hence why I mentioned many. You will readily believe that a creator exists, but will not event pause for thought on other possibilities. You seem to be certain that you are right and you know not one thing more than me. You asked me to imagine infinite nothingness and I went you one better, yet you still think there is a creator without any evidence at all.

I’m not preaching, I’m trying to demonstrate that there are many possible answers that even I can think of. The creator did it is just lazy and lame as an explanation because it explains nothing at all. If I said I think that existence is an infinite amount of one dimensional matter that when bent pops out a universe with a bang, you would say your creator made that stuff and you still have not explained a thing… doing nothing but putting your creator god in the gaps of what science cannot yet explain. That’s just lazy.

I’m an atheist because that is where the evidence has lead me. Your infinite god is second best on this planet, and there are more than 32000 cults who claim belief in the same god, but also think you are wrong about it. Basically, if we add up those that believe like you and those that do not your tiny group is far outnumbered. While the same is true for me, my point is that you don’t have evidence, numbers, or logic on your side. You have faith, I have facts and reasonable hypotheses which we can endeavor to test. You have a book that’s dubious at best, a work of fiction most likely with some history thrown in. Not unlike a Dan Brown novel. Your book has been fact checked over and over… the important parts do not have evidence. Biologically speaking you and I are both hairless apes with big brains and a penchant for making tools and thinking about things. We’ve lost our penile bones and prehensile tails but the apes and us, we’re cousins. Our DNA is marked by viral traces and other tell tale signs that we came from a long line of evolutionary changes going all the way back to single cell life on this planet.

Your book gets that part all wrong. So some will cherry pick and call that allegory. But they only say that when science has shown the book to be wrong and your god gets shoved further into the ever shrinking gaps in the knowledge of science.

I’m an atheist because the facts lead me there.

As a species we humans are quite young yet we’ve pieced together how it all began for us. We’ve split the atom, visited other planets, augmented our bodies, increased our knowledge, terraformed this planet, harvest energy from every known place, improved on nature’s bounty, and done so many wonderful things that it won’t all fit in even an online encyclopedia. All that and your book stands still, static, a relic from our past. Not one good lesson in it cannot be sourced from other places and without all the dogma that yours has it wrapped up in. Many who believe in creators deny the facts of science that in fact keep them alive each day. They too have faith in that book. Then there are deists who know the book to be false but still think a creator is out there… blind faith is their crutch. They can’t explain why but they feel that it’s necessary.

We humans, one day we’ll grow up and look back at this time and the thousands of years before us and laugh a nervous laugh. Our future descendants will curiously ask their parents if humans really thought those things way back then and wonder how. I hope by then they will be travelling space and vacationing on the beaches of planets on the other side of the galaxy. Whatever happens between now and then, time will march on inexorably and humans are very unlikely to find evidence for what is now still fantasy. Creation science has failed at every turn. It denies the facts in favor of faith that out there somewhere is a god of some sort who created this place just for us humans who loves us and needs our money and wants us to be happy and live with him in the clouds… despite the fact that 99% of every person ever born has failed that one test: believe in that god. So the benevolence of the creator, some think, is to drown or burn everything that doesn’t turn out the way it’s ego needs it to be.

You can then argue that the idea can’t be fully discounted and I’ll push right back and ask for evidence for the very first claim that a god exists. No, that a god _can_ exist. Without that evidence it’s just an unfalsifiable claim and shall remain so. It’s not worth one sheet of all the paper the holy books have been printed on. The creator god hypothesis will not change with the facts, nor conform to known truth. It will always be blind faith unless and until that god shows up and is everything people have thought it to be. It could turn out that the only god like being ever to visit our planet is the one that is called Satan but it seems he’s got a way with words and wanted his very own book. The real problem for those that believe in a creator is that they ‘hope’ such a being is like a Jesus character seen through rose colored glasses yet they cannot prove their imagined creator exists nor whether that being would be worthy of worship. Wishful thinking and delusion is all that blind faith is. It can never be more. If you or someone found evidence it would no longer be faith, it would be fact. Do you ever wonder why your creator left it to you to figure this all out when his omnipotence would make it easy to show himself and make it all fact. The only plausible answer is that this creator god does not exist or if one does it doesn’t give two hoots about life on this planet.

I’m an atheist because that is where the facts lead me. I’m an anti-theist because the dogma of human religions is delusional thinking and controlling hateful bigotry. I know this, I used to believe. When I began searching in earnest for fact and reason, the knowledge of science and philosophy took me down this path. I’m a nihilist because that’s how I see it, there’s no evidence in _this_ existence for any purpose or reasons. Until evidence for something outside our understanding is found, that’s how will be, above or below ground.

Other ideas have plausible tests, and as we learn more will find the possibilities that explain our existence the best, then we’ll test them and test them until we are sure, then test them some more. Faith in creators will still be just faith. There are no tests for it, no evidence, not one credible trace.

But, have you ever tried God? The only way you can know for sure about God, is if you give Him a try. You have to “know” first – then “try”, but science isn’t like that. They “try” their theories first and only then do they “know” if their theories turn into facts. This is what happened to me, although my back was against the wall at the time, I gave God a “trial”. Only THEN did He show Himself to me as real.
robin claire